I purchased a Lafité II on the 27-11-2015 from PC Specialist and received it late December 2015. I was rather disappointed with the laptop after receiving it as it feels and looks cheap. The metal finish quickly became marked and scratched after a few months of what I believe to be careful usage. The metal edges are also quite harsh and feel slightly sharp rather than being smooth as I excepted.

After 4/5 months the laptop developed a screen and track pad issue. I found this rather surprising for such a new product to develop two separate issues within 6 months, I thought I was unlucky! The screen would flicker and randomly turn off, this continued to get worse until the screen no longer turned on at all. The track pad would persistently become stuck when left or right clicked. I request a RMA on the 28/06/2016 which cost me I believe approx ~£35. PC specialist should of covered the fee for this RMA due to the how soon the issue occurred, however they did not.

Now I was without my laptop for over a week. I used my laptop for working from home, emailing etc. so It was extremely frustrating to be without a computer. However, I expected that once I received the laptop back the issues would be resolved permanently.

Once I received the laptop back it was OK for around 11 months before the issue with the screen returned. I contacted PC Specialist customer service again and was offered a free RMA but decided to open up the laptop to check the laptop. The fix they have performed was some kind of glue that tries to hold the cable in place, this seemed rather shoddy and more of a patch than a permanent fix. The glue had become unattached which is probably why the screen had stopped working again. I unplugged the screen cable and reconnected it, lo and behold the screen started working again.

Every few weeks now I have to remove the laptop cover, disconnect and reconnect the screen cable. The track pad issue had also reappeared where the track pad will occasionally get stuck I’m not sure what they would of done on the second RMA, but I imagine it would of involved more glue. One of my friends laptop who had the same issue had a small piece of black tape applied to the cable in a attempt to hold the screen cable in place, unfortunately laptops heat up and most adhesives and tape will slowly come undone. It seems like a design flaw in this laptop, the cable should really clip into place and be held in place by the slot it is connected to.

Nice glue attempt PC specialist

Another issue with the laptop is that it is impossible to turn off the back light on the keyboard permanently, it switches itself back on after being turned off. If anyone has a fix for this please let me know.

I know two other people with this laptop who have also experienced their screen cable disconnecting inside the laptop, though the fix is relatively easy by unplugging and reconnecting the cable it is time consuming and shows that this issue is likely widespread on the Lafité range but PC Specialist refused to tell me if they’d had other laptops returned for this issue.

Overall I recommend to avoiding PC Specialist and especially the Lafité range due to the experience I have had with customer service and their poorly constructed products. I wanted to warn people who are having the same issue with the Lafité that you are not alone, please let me know if you have the same issue. It would be interesting to see how many other people are having the screen cable disconnect issue!

Another laptop I got from PC Specialist in 2012 they didn’t put any screws on the hard drive to hold it in place, so the hard drive would slide out of the connector giving me an error when I tried turning it on. How the laptop passed quality control at PC Specialist is beyond me. I will never buy a product from them again, nor recommend them to anyone.

2 Comments

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. I am very sorry to hear that

this is the experience that you have had so far and I only hope to use this

positively to improve our service and forward your feedback to our Research and Development Manager.

When you had sent the machine back previously, I’m afraid it
would have been outside of the initial collect and return service that we offer
as standard. Optional longer collect and return periods are offered under
different warranty levels at the point of purchase, although
this is not required of us, we do understand some customers would prefer a
higher level of cover.

Admittedly, the glue you found in the machine does look
untidy and this is not the professional finish we would hope to have left the
repair work with. I regret to hear that this did not prove a more permanent
resolution as this was intended to alleviate the issue were this to reoccur.

I would also say that the feel of the chassis, is not
something that we would be able to amend without performing alterations to the
panels which could potentially cause more harm than good.

Sadly, this chassis is no longer in production and as a
result we have been unable to secure spare parts or discuss this with the
original manufacturer.

Moving forward, regardless of whether you would be seeking a
partial refund or for us to look into further repairs, we will need to first
bring the chassis back to us for inspection by our RMA team which on this
occasion we are happy to offer free of charge as a good will gesture.

Again, we are very sorry that this has been your experience
and we would like you to know that we have only grown and improved our service
over the years. I can see that you originally would not have been looking to
order with us however if you would potentially be looking to order from us in
future, we would be happy to discuss on what we can offer as gesture of goodwill.

If you are interested in looking further in to us you can
find a video of our production department here:

Thanks for getting back to me. I’ll contact you via email to arrange a convenient time to collect the laptop.

It would be interesting also if you could provide some statistics on the issues and returns from other customers regarding the Lafité II. Please feel to provide these in the comments below.

I hope you don’t mind if I remove the harddrive as I don’t want to wipe my computer. I hope you can understand that at this point I have little trust in your company and would prefer you not to have any of my data.